


Take It Easy

by singwithin



Series: our lives are bound to change [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Lance is not an esthetician, One-Sided Attraction, Platonic Kidge, Set between Seasons 3 and 4, Slice of Life, Team Bonding, crushes are terrible, dubious skincare techniques, in which keith and lance actually get along okay, teen drama in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 11:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17897990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singwithin/pseuds/singwithin
Summary: Lance flashes finger guns at her and jogs off, leaving her standing in the middle of the corridor in her dust-covered armor, beads of sweat dripping down her face, trying to figure out what she’s gotten herself into. Oh, right. The conversation at breakfast the other day. The face goo. She’d agreed to try it.Which means, apart from the weirdness of putting the substance she regularly consumes for nutrition on her face, that it’ll be the two of them. Making conversation, the way she’s tried her best to avoid ever since their little heart-to-heart on Olkarion. And it’s fine. She can do it.





	Take It Easy

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set right after [Chapter 3 of Waiting, Wishing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12456220/chapters/31825527), but you don't have to read that story to get what's happening here (basically: Pidge has a crush on Lance, Keith accidentally called her out on it and embarrassed her in front of everyone, now she's feeling awkward).

Allura clears her throat with just enough authority that the team automatically turns towards her as she leans across the table and gently but firmly places a hand on Lance’s arm.

“Lance, what is wrong with your face?” the princess asks.

Simultaneously, they all stare at Lance as he guiltily looks up from his breakfast goo and – yeah, okay, Lance’s skin is practically sparkling, which is definitely not normal.

“N— Nothing’s  _wrong_ with it!” Lance sputters, flushing red. Somehow, blushing only makes his skin shimmer more brightly. It’s like he’d morphed into a human disco ball overnight.   
  
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Keith says from the end of the table, letting his spork clatter into his empty bowl. “You look like you rolled around in glitter. Like a chinchilla, or something.” 

Shiro looks faintly alarmed at the prospect of Lance having somehow located enough glitter to do so. He sneaks a side-eyed glance at Pidge and quirks an eyebrow, like he wants to find out whether she knows anything about it but isn’t brave enough to actually ask. Pidge just shrugs, because she definitely doesn’t keep track of all the weird things Lance does in his free time, thank you, Shiro.

“ _You’re_  a chinchilla,” Lance grumbles half-heartedly.

Keith rolls his eyes at him but Lance doesn’t notice. He’s too distracted by the fact that Allura’s hand is still resting on his arm. This is the longest they’ve ever touched outside of training in probably ever, give or take a few doboshes.

“Do you mean you did this to your face on purpose?” Allura clarifies. In his dazed state, it takes him a moment to process what she’s actually asking, but Lance eventually nods. Satisfied, Allura pats his arm and returns to her breakfast.

“That’s fine, then. I thought you might have contracted a Glass Virus,” she says cheerfully. “That’s when the skin on your face slowly cracks open because the layers underneath have solidified. It looks a bit like glass before everything starts to, ah, leak.”

Shiro finally finds his voice. “Allura, that’s  _awful._ ”  
  
Allura shrugs. “No worse than your— what do you call them? ‘Pimples.’”  
  
“Not that I don’t love learning about gross alien diseases while eating, but I’d like to know _why_  Lance is sparkly,” Hunk interrupts.

Lance groans. The blush is starting to fade but he’s still obviously flustered. “It’s not a big deal. I was trying out a new face mask last night, it’s probably just some residue or something. But it worked great, check  _this_ out!”

Expectantly, Lance angles his face towards Hunk and waits until he reaches over and pats his cheek, his skeptical expression giving way to awe. “Whoa, smooth.”

“I know, right?” Lance says smugly. “I grabbed some of the junk you and Pidge brought back from that rando market you found last week, the one that’s kind of like cinnamon?”

Hunk frowns. “What junk— wait, that brown powder? Lance, I got that for eating! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find spices that are actually edible?”   
  
“Calm your pants, I didn’t take that much. Anyway, the one I used was more yellow-ish–”

They’ve all gotten used to seeing Lance walk around the Castle with a blend of Altean goo slathered on his face. He’d grilled Coran about its nutrients long enough to conclude it’d be just as good for the outside of a body as it was for the inside. Incorporating secondary ingredients into his face masks is new, although from his impromptu speech about Altean food goo’s seemingly extended-release hydrating properties, he’s clearly put a lot of thought into it. For someone who frequently claims to have slept through every single one of his science classes, Lance understands a lot more chemistry than he thinks he does.

“I still can’t believe you were willing to put all that stuff on your face,” Pidge says once Lance has finished.

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” Lance sniffs. He shoves a sporkful of food goo into his mouth.

And Pidge, much to her own surprise, says, “Fine.”

Lance looks up at her with suspicion. “Fine? What doesh ‘fine’ mean?” he says through a mouthful of goo.   
  
“It means I’ll try it.”

The room goes awkwardly silent for a moment as the others pretend they aren’t all staring at them. Pidge makes sure to keep her expression perfectly neutral, even though she’s dying inside because she  _knows_  that any moment someone’s going to make a big deal out of it.

Lance swallows, considers it, then nods. “Okay, cool.”

And… that’s it. Everyone starts talking again and breakfast goes on, like nothing unusual had happened.

-

Voltron’s sent to a volcanic planet to scout out a Galra base that is less of a base and more of a campground. The place appears long abandoned. Allura attempts to put a positive spin on it by pointing out that at least they’ve discovered a planet the Galra are  _not_  currently occupying, but even that doesn’t do much to raise morale. The air is full of ash and everything is bone-dry. Their helmets filter out most of it, but not enough. By they time they get back to the Castle, they all feel like their mouths are full of dirt and dust.

Lance loudly announces to the team that his skin is in need of some serious downtime after being exposed to such harsh conditions and leaves first, ostensibly to go back to his quarters for said downtime. Pidge ends up trailing behind him because there’s really only one way back, although she tries to maintain enough distance that it won’t seem like she’s following him, because she isn’t– and just for the record, she’s getting very tired of having to put so much thought into every single one of their interactions.

Lance looks back at her and she stops in her tracks. “Oh, hey, you still in?”

She isn’t sure how to respond to that, so she nods. Lance’s face lights up with excitement.

“Sweet! We’ll have a mini spa day, it’ll be fun. Meet me in the kitchen in a varga!”

He flashes finger guns at her and jogs off, leaving her standing in the middle of the corridor in her dust-covered armor, beads of sweat dripping down her face, trying to figure out what she’s gotten herself into.

Oh, right. The conversation at breakfast the other day. The face goo. She’d agreed to try it.

Which means, apart from the weirdness of putting the substance she regularly consumes for nutrition on her face, that it’ll be the two of them. Making conversation, the way she’s tried her best to avoid ever since their little heart-to-heart on Olkarion. And it’s fine. She can do it.

-

She can’t do it.

-

“‘Nooooo, Pidge, you are definitelyoverthinking it. Seriously, this is all we ever talk about anymore! Can you  _please_ just put a lid on your emotions instead of letting them ooze all over the place?’ …I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what he’d say. And  _that’s_  why I can’t ask Hunk,” Pidge concludes, switching back to her normal voice as she peers around her trash sculpture of Hunk.

Her audience, nestled in junk-Shiro’s hair, is not impressed. The blue space caterpillar chirps.

Pidge frowns down at them. “Excuse you, my impressions aregreat.”

She flops onto her back and stares up at the ceiling, cataloguing her options. She can’t think of a good reason to cancel on Lance that wouldn’t make him suspicious and she’s running out of choices to ask for backup. She’s already ruled out Hunk, and she’s not sure about asking Allura or Shiro–

That’s when it hits her. Well, technically, her sweatshirt hits her, right in the face, because the caterpillars have just dropped it on her, but it coincides with figuring out the solution. She pulls her sweatshirt over her undersuit and shoves her feet into her boots, because being half-changed is as good as it’s going to get.

“Thanks for your help, guys!” she tells the caterpillars, hurrying out of her room.

-

Pidge catches Keith in the hallway. ‘Catches’ is not an exaggeration because she actually latches onto his arm to make sure he doesn’t get away. It’s taken her nearly half a varga to track him down, and she’s nearly out of time.

He looks down at her, clearly startled, and still in his paladin armor. “Uh, what’s up?”

She levels him with a hard stare. “ _You owe me_.”

He doesn’t get what she’s talking about right away, but embarrassment is contagious. She figures if she keeps staring at him long enough, he’ll eventually remember what she’s talking about and she won’t have to rehash the whole awkward event.

It works.

Keith’s eyes widen before his face settles into a mildly pained expression. It sort of reminds her of the time they’d guessed his birthday and gotten Shiro to confirm it and spontaneously decided to celebrate at dinner. Coran had made them all wear silly hats he’d dug out of some storage cube because he remembered hearing about Earth traditions and party hats and he’d forced Keith into wearing the most ridiculous one. Once he’d realized there was no escape, Keith had sat through dinner with that exact same expression.

“… okay, and?” says Keith.

“And I’m cashing in. So I told Lance I’d try his face mask thing, right, and he invited me to do a spa day but there’s no way I can do it alone because things have been so weird since Olkarion but if I bail it’ll make it worse, and that’s why I need you to come with me.”

It’s more information than Keith probably needed and he has to close his eyes as he processes everything. She watches as he takes a deep breath, muttering something under his breath that sounds a lot like ‘ _patience’,_ then opens his eyes again.

“This isn’t really a good time, Pidge. I’m leaving for a mission with the Blades first thing tomorrow and I have a lot to do before I go–”

If there was anything that would convince her to back down, the reminder that sometimes Keith left their team for another one was definitely not it. She tightens her grip on his arm.

“Don’t worry. This won’t take long, I promise,” Pidge lies, tugging him in the direction of the kitchen.

-

Lance had changed back into his civilian clothes. His eyebrows raise questioningly when he sees Keith trailing behind Pidge, and the boys’ eyes meet as silently, Keith dares him to say something,  _anything_ , just to pick a fight and give him an out–

Until Pidge slugs him in the arm, breaking his focus.

“Keith was just telling me how he’d been dying to try this stuff too, weren’t you,  _buddy_?” she says blithely. “So I brought him along. Hope that’s okay, Lance.”

Lance looks skeptical but shrugs. “Sure, I should have enough. Let me grab another cup.”

Keith glares daggers at Pidge the moment Lance turns his back to them. She smiles sweetly at him in response.

Lance’s spa day supplies are lined up on the counter, covered by a blanket. Before they begin he makes them swear they won’t reveal his Top Secret methods to anyone. This is apparently something he genuinely worries about, because, as he tells them with the utmost seriousness, what they are about to experience will  _change their lives forever_. 

Pidge thinks this is dumb, and tells him so. “Seriously, who would we even tell?”

“Just swear!” Lance insists, scowling.

Keith huffs impatiently. “Fine,” he says, clapping one hand over Pidge’s mouth before she can say anything else and raising the other hand in an approximation of a Scouting salute. “We swear.”

Lance waits until she, too, raises her hand in an actual three-fingered salute, but seems satisfied. “A little sloppy, but I’ll allow it.”

Pidge tilts her head up slightly and blinks up at Keith. “Lemme go or I’ll bite you,” she says through Keith’s hand. Keith releases her in a hurry.

Lance pulls the blanket off with dramatic flourish and animatedly gestures to the setup on the counter. “Okey-dokey, here we go! Just three easy steps for guaranteed results: Steam, scrub, and soothe. Nothing to it!”

There’s a covered basket, the corner of a towel peeking out; a tea kettle and cups; a couple small containers, one of which contains something that like goo; and two short Puigian scarves that Lance holds out to them.

“You and Keith can use them,” Pidge says.

Lance looks doubtful. “You sure?”

Pidge quirks an eyebrow at him, a wordless reminder that she specializes in finding solutions to the most challenging situations, and this is far from challenging. Who does he think he is to question her ingenuity?

Lance’s mouth twists wryly in response, but he offers one scarf to Keith, who just stares at it.

“Why do I even need this?”

“Watch and learn,” Pidge says grandly. She pushes her bangs back with one hand then slides her glasses up to rest on top of her head. Matt’s old glasses are surprisingly sturdy. This isn’t the first time she’s used them as a makeshift headband.

“That works,” Lance says, looking impressed as he knots the other scarf behind his head.

Reluctantly, Keith copies him. “This is weird,” he mumbles.

Pidge goes to stomp on his foot, but Keith slides both his feet out of the way before she can reach with her unfortunately shorter legs. Lance notices their scuffle, glancing from Pidge to Keith.

“For someone who ‘really wanted’ to try this you sure are unenthusiastic about the process, dude,” Lance says dryly.

“Not unenthusiastic, just tired,” Keith says, poker-faced. It’s hard to argue with that, considering the morning they’d had, so Lance drops it.

They pull out the multipurpose chairs from under the counter, unfolding the legs, and settle in; they’re more like stools than real chairs, but their low backs made it safe to tilt back without collapsing.

The covered basket turns out to hold heated cloths. Lance instructs them to drape a cloth over their faces, something about preparing their skin for cleansing by steaming away ‘toxins’, a term he seems to believe is defined as ‘gross space dirt’.

But Pidge can’t even bring herself to argue with him right now because Lance’s cloth trick is magic. She can feel her sinuses clearing as pressure lifts from her head; she hadn’t realized just how much the dust had affected her. She makes a happy little noise of contentment, settling into her chair.

“This actually isn’t so bad,” Keith says in mild surprise, voice muffled under the cloth.

“Yeah, well, that’s kind of the whole point,” Lance sniffs. “Skincare:  _it’s actually not so bad_.”

“Shut up,” Keith says amicably, leaning further back in his chair so he can prop his feet up on the edge of the counter.

They sit there until the cloths on their faces start to cool. Then they all have hot tea, because apparently they need to steam the toxins out of their insides, too. Lance fusses about the amount of sweetener Pidge puts in her tea because it isn’t healthy or something and before Pidge can argue that space sugar doesn’t count, Keith points out it isn’t even real sugar so it’s probably fine. Lance complains about the two of them ganging up on him, but she can tell he isn’t actually that upset about it, so she sneaks some more sweetener into his tea when he’s not looking.

Once they’re mostly done with their tea, Lance pulls out a small container, twisting off the lid to reveal something similar to glue, or maybe wax.

“This is for exfoliating. Just, uh, don’t ask me what it is, Coran explained it to me and it made my head hurt,” Lance says. He smears some on his forehead and around his nose. “Anyway, you wait about thirty ticks and then peel it off. It works great on blackheads.”

He demonstrates, holding out the used strip as proof. Keith declines to look, but Pidge leans in closer. Whatever the exfoliant is made of is definitely effective.

“ _Gross_ ,” Pidge says appreciatively. Lance beams at her.

She dips her hand into the adhesive and manages to cover half of Keith’s nose before he squirms away, baring his teeth at her like a cat in a bath. He sulks his way through the thirty ticks, at which point Lance has to help Keith peel the stuff off his nose because Keith apparently can’t manage it on his own and Keith nearly punches him when Lance tells him not to be such a baby before Pidge intervenes.

In the end it takes all three of them to get the exfoliant up because it turns out that Keith really wasn’t joking about it not coming off.

“Are you crying?” Lance says incredulously, eyes wide.

“ _No_ ,” Keith snaps, hands protectively cupped around his nose.

Pidge takes it upon herself to settle  _with science_  whether the exfoliant was really that awful or if Lance was bizarrely immune to its effects. She dabs some onto the sore spot on her chin as the boys watch closely and peels it off with the same results Lance had. Bonus: one less zit.

Lance grudgingly concludes that he should probably test his skincare routine efficacy more thoroughly before trying to patent it. Keith is overwhelmed by the idea of Lance ever patenting anything. While they bicker, Pidge seizes the opportunity to examine the exfoliant, having noticed that the jar actually has two separate compartments and that Lance had only opened the lower one.

She twists open the top lid and peers inside, but she doesn’t see much before the lid slams shut as Lance unceremoniously plucks the jar from her hands. “Nope, nuh-uh, bad idea.”

“Why?”

“Told you, it’s Coran’s, and you really don’t want to know any more. Trust me.”

It’s probably the worst thing he could have said, because even if Pidge wasn’t already curious, it pushes Keith’s suspicion to an all-time high.

“Let me see that.” Keith grabs the jar from Lance, ignoring his indignant yelp of protest. He twists open the lid just enough for something to tentatively wiggle its way out before hastily pulling back as Keith slams the lid back down.

“It’s alive!” he chokes out.

Exasperated, Lance throws his hands in the air. “I tried to warn you!”

-

Finally, Lance unveils his  _piece de resistance_. His latest concoction of face mask goo is a muted lavender color instead of the familiar green. He pushes the bowl towards them and tells them to cover their faces, demonstrating proper technique on his own. Dubiously, they copy him until their faces are all not-quite-Galra purple.

“Now what happens?” Keith asks, mask applied.

“Now we wait,” Lance says, reaching for the kitchen timer and setting it. “Twenty doboshes, then you rinse it off. I usually listen to music but I only have the one set of headphones.”

“Imagine that,” Pidge says dryly, because he seems to have forgotten that they’re her headphones and at some point she  _does_ expect to get them back.

Lance ignores her. “So. Ideas, anyone?”

Much to their surprise, Keith does. “We could play that game.”

The game is a slightly more competitive variation of Twenty Questions mixed with Rock, Paper, Scissors. The rules are simple: Everyone has to answer, and more rules can be added at any time. None of them remember who’d come up with the game in the first place, but it’s ended up being both a good way to kill time and a much less invasive bonding experience than the Altean mind-meld gear. They haven’t been able to settle on a points system yet, so no one’s ever officially won.

Pidge and Keith shoot for the category, her rock crushing Keith’s scissors. She ends up going with ‘favorite things’, even though it’s kind of a cop out choice because it’s so vague.

She and Lance shoot next; paper covers rock, Lance wins. He does a drumroll on the table.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the first topic of the evening iiiiis: Halloween candy!” he announces with entirely too much enthusiasm.

Keith looks confused. “Didn’t we do this one already the other day, with Hunk?”

“Nah, that was… food, I think? Favorite foods? Totally different concept.”

Keith shakes his head. “I don’t get why people are so into Halloween. It just seems so– so over-commercialized.”

“Maybe because it’s fun, you weirdo? Also, free candy. Anyway, you’re up, Pidge, loser answers first,” Lance decides arbitrarily. He nudges her with his elbow, which wouldn’t have been a problem if Pidge wasn’t also downing the last of her tea.

“ _Really, Lance?”_ she chokes out, coughing furiously.

Lance thumps her back sympathetically. It doesn’t help. “My bad.”

They wait for her to finish hacking up her lungs before continuing with the game. Admittedly, it is not her finest hour. Then again, they’re all sitting around the kitchen with food goo smeared on their faces, so at least she’s in good company.

She clears her throat. “Um, I like peanut butter cups. Matt and I used to fight over who’d gotten more whenever we went trick or treating and I usually ended up stealing his.”

“Same for me,” Lance says cheerfully. “Lucky for me, no one else in my family liked them that much, so I never had to fight for them. Remind me never to go trick or treating with you. Keith?”

“Sour gummy worms,” Keith says, without elaborating. “Point of order, are we shooting for every topic?”

‘Point of order,’ Pidge repeats, silently mouthing the words, because trust Keith to be extra-formal with what is the world’s least formal game.

Lance bares his teeth in a fierce grin. With the face mask, the effect is slightly terrifying. “ _Bring it._ ”

The boys shoot. Keith’s scissors win.

“Favorite pet,” Keith decides. “Or pets, I don’t care. Go.”

Pidge zones out as Lance continues to ramble about a giant goldfish he had when he was nine years old and wonders whether she should pick the space caterpillars. She’s not sure they count as pets, though; they’re self-sufficient enough that they’re more like freeloading alien roommates.

Lance still hasn’t settled on his answer by the time she tunes back in. “—although we already had a turtle and two finches and sometimes a cat by the time I was born and they were all pretty cool, so I’m torn–”

“Wait, how do you ‘sometimes’ have a cat?” Pidge interrupts, frowning.

“Julio was his own man, he liked to do his own thing. Kind of like Keith, actually,” Lance adds unnecessarily, much to Keith’s displeasure. “Anyway, Julio visited lots of people around town. I’m pretty sure we were his favorite family because my sisters gave him cans of tuna.”

“So he wasn’t actually  _your_  cat, he was just a stray,” Pidge clarifies. “That shouldn’t count as a pet.”

To their surprise, Keith disagrees. “Actually, I think it should. We had a cat like that too. Technically it had us, I guess, because it’d been living out back before we moved in. Ours was just called Cat, though. He’d have been my pick.”

Lance looks faintly impressed by Keith sticking up for him. “Gotta say, I never would have pegged you for a cat person.”

“We fly giant robot lions. I think that makes us all cat people,” Keith deadpans, much to Pidge’s delight. She offers him a high five that he returns after a split second of hesitation, while Lance loudly groans at the pun.

Pidge turns her attention back to Lance. “I know I’m going to regret asking, but what actually happened to your goldfish?”

Lance heaves an overly-dramatic sigh, putting a hand to his forehead in an obvious pantomime of Tragedy. “My sister Rachel fed him to Julio when we were out of tuna fish. Anyway, now that I’ve shared my tale of woe with you all, it’s Pidge’s turn.”

“Well, we have a dog, so I guess it should be her…” Pidge trails off when she realizes with a sudden pang that there’s no way to know if Bae Bae is even alive anymore and tries her best to ignore the thought. “…but I’m going to have to say that Kaltenecker’s my favorite.”

Lance’s face falls. “I should have said Kaltenecker! Can I change my answer?”

“Too late,” Pidge says smugly as she and Keith face off again.

Keith wins once more, this time playing paper to her rock instead of scissors, and grimaces as he realizes he’s stuck picking the topic once again. “Uh… movies?”

Lance leans forward, already on the edge of his seat with anticipation, and Pidge rolls her eyes at him because she’s pretty sure she already knows what movie Lance is going to pick.

“…that don’t have a sequel,” Keith adds at the last moment, which means Pidge’s selection is also null. Her face falls.

“What? No!” Lance complains, slamming back in his chair. “That’s hard!”

“What about remakes?” Pidge asks anxiously. “Do remakes count?”

Keith lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Sure, remakes are fine.”

“ _Yessss_ ,” Pidge and Lance say in unison.

“Team Remakes!” Lance crows, holding his hand up for a high five. It’s ridiculous, but she slaps her hand against his anyway.

“Team Remakes!”

-

The Castle alarms go off before they can finish.   
  
“Galra cruisers spotted near the Balmera. They’re moving into attack formation, the Balmerans need us to head them off while they prepare their defenses,” Shiro announces over the Castle’s comms. “Everyone to your Lions! Wormhole opening in ten doboshes.”   
  
Keith’s yanked off his headscarf and is already halfway to the door by the time Shiro’s done talking, face mask and all. “On our way, Shiro.”  
  
“Hold up!” Lance hollers at him. “At least wipe the mask off, you’ll get your helmet all messy—”   
  
Keith pauses and turns, holding out a hand to catch the towel Lance is already throwing to him before Lance is even fully in his line of sight. Their motions are perfectly synced. It’s kind of impressive. “Thanks. See you guys out there.”

Lance passes Pidge another towel as he pats at his own face. “Remember to wash your face when we get back, okay? That way you’ll at least get something out of it.”   
  
She nods, face already half-buried in her towel, and rushes back to her room to collect her armor, grimacing when she remembers she hadn’t fully cleaned it after that morning’s mission, but there’s nothing she can do about it now.

By the time she gets to the Bridge, her face is mostly clear of goo. She jams her helmet on on the way, leaving the visor flipped up. The others have all reported in as en route to their Lions – all except Lance, who’s standing by the doors with his helmet tucked under his arm, like he’s waiting for something.

Or someone?

His eyebrows raise when he sees her and he taps his cheek. “Hey, you missed a spot.”

“So did you,” Pidge points out, looking up at him.

“Hold still.”

Lance reaches out and catches her chin to swipe at her face, his thumb gently brushing her cheek before he lets go. It’d be an intimate gesture, under different circumstances, and Pidge isn’t entirely comfortable with how frequently she’s thought about what that might be like.

Her hands are already moving before she realizes it and she carefully brushes a smear from his nose. She can’t help grinning when he goes crosseyed to try to see what she’s doing.

“Much better,” she teases, poking the tip of his nose.

It isn’t actually much better. Their faces may be slightly cleaner, but now they’ve both got purple goop on their hands and it’s going to get on their gloves.

An unreadable expression flickers across Lance’s face and his shoulders drop forwards. “Look, Pidge, I don’t know how to say this…”

Seeing him so serious wipes the grin from her face and makes her stomach clench. Her emotions are oozing again, and her mental version of Hunk is displeased.

“Can it wait? We really need to get going.”

“I know, I know, just give me a tick,” Lance says. He reaches up, scratches the back of his head with his free hand. “I wanted to tell you that I had fun hanging out with you today. We usually end up doing stuff you like, but this was the first time you actually wanted to try something that I’m into. And that was cool. So… yeah. Thanks for that.”

He flashes her a small smile and heads inside before she has a chance to process what had just happened.

Then Coran’s voice is in her ear reminding her to get a move on, wormhole opens in one dobosh, and soon all her attention turns to the fight.

-

Pidge heads up to the Bridge for debriefing, Keith’s quick footsteps echoing half a step behind her. They aren’t the first ones back; Hunk’s already deep in discussion with Shiro about how many consecutive layers of metal the Yellow Lion’s armored claws could cut through while Coran checks in with the Balmerans. Pidge removes her helmet, shaking out her sweat-damp hair.

Hunk’s back is to the doors, so Shiro spots them first. He nods in greeting, then squints at them.

“What happened to you two?” he asks suspiciously, which is a bizarre question from someone who’d observed the entire fight.

“Shiro?” Keith says questioningly.

Shiro holds up a hand to stop him. There's a funny expression on his face. “Actually, never mind. I think I’m going to let Hunk handle this one.”

Shiro claps a hand on Hunk’s shoulder before striding off to join Coran at his station. Hunk turns around, clearly perturbed by his sudden responsibility.

“That was weird,” Pidge comments. Keith grunts in agreement.

Also weird: Hunk is staring at them.

“Did you know that you both have a little bit of, uh, something? On your faces? It’s red,” Hunk informs them. “Oh! Not like blood or anything, it’s more of a… marinara sauce kind of red? Or maybe more like a sunburn? Hang on, let me pull up a feed real quick.”

Hunk helpfully activates the camera in his gauntlet and aims it at them so they can see themselves.

There’s a moment of silence.

Finally, Keith speaks up. “I have no idea what this is.”

Keith looks like someone shoved a very runny cherry pie in his face. Pidge’s face is mostly solid red, except for a curved line running down her cheek that’s about the size of someone’s thumb. It hadn’t been visible through their helmets’ visors, but there was no mistaking it now.

“I do,” Pidge says grimly. “It’s Lance’s face mask. There must have been a dye in whatever he mixed into it, and we probably rubbed it into our skin when we were wiping them off earlier.” 

The video feed abruptly cuts off as Hunk triumphantly slams a fist into his palm. “I knew he took the brown powder!” he says excitedly. “I’m pretty sure it’s more like beets than cinnamon ’cause it stains like  _crazy_. Great substitute for food coloring, though. It really only glitters when you mix it with water, which… actually, that’s how you’d rinse off a face mask, isn’t it? Huh, that explains a lot.”

“This stuff  _stains_?” Keith demands, voice cracking. He buries his head in his hands. It doesn’t do much to conceal the fact that the the tips of his ears are turning a shade of red that very nearly matches his face.

Pidge takes a slow, deliberate step away from him, just in case he decides to blame her for their unfortunate new makeovers. Keith’s only embarrassed now, but that’s not to say he won’t be mad later.

“Is it permanent, Hunk? Please tell me it isn’t permanent.”

“It isn’t permanent,” Hunk replies immediately, looking increasingly sheepish as he twiddles his thumbs. “Probably.”

“Probably?” she echoes in disbelief. 

“Well, it’s hard to say. I haven’t had enough free time to work with any of the new spices enough to know for sure...”

From behind her, Keith speaks up, his tone low and warning. “Pidge.”

She rounds on him, scowling, because this is definitely not her fault.

“What?” she snaps defensively.

“Red is  _really_  not your color.”

A pause.

She stares at him, not sure she heard him correctly. Keith stares back coolly.

She narrows her eyes and looks closer, studying his splotchy red face. And– there. The edge of his mouth is twitching, like he’s trying to hold back a smile. There’s a glimmer of mirth in his eyes.

He’s  _teasing her_.

Pidge lets out an incredulous bark of laughter, breaking into a wide grin as Keith starts to laugh, too. It turns out laughter is even more contagious than embarrassment, because once they start they can’t seem to stop laughing.

“‘Three easy steps for guaranteed results!’” Pidge quotes, imitating Lance, jazz hands and all. 

Keith snorts. “Yeah. Guaranteed to look  _ridiculous.”_

“I’m sorry about your nose. Does it still hurt?” 

“Nah. The mask thing actually made it stop stinging.”

“… I can’t believe I ever agreed to do this.”

“Well, _I_ can’t believe you dragged me into it!”

“Well, I, for one, hope Lance learned his lesson and doesn’t steal from me again,” Hunk adds with affected sternness, arms crossed, and that only sets them off again.

They barely manage to pull themselves together when Lance and Allura finally get back. They’re both in full armor, deep in conversation until Lance pulls off his helmet and Allura abruptly cuts off mid-sentence. 

Half of Lance’s face is a bright, solid firetruck red. The other half looks like an abstract painting. There’s a pale stripe along the bridge of his nose with a larger dot right where Pidge had poked him.

Allura looks over at the others; Pidge and Keith wave. Hunk shrugs.

Without a word, Allura turns on her heel and heads over to join Coran and Shiro, leaving a bewildered Lance behind.

“What’d I do now?” he says plaintively to the room at large.

Hunk coughs. Lance looks up and finally notices Pidge and Keith, identical smirks on their bright red faces, Hunk standing behind them and unsuccessfully trying to hide his own amusement. Lance’s hands fly up to his own face as he realizes, with dawning horror, that something has gone very, very wrong. 

“Aww, quiznak,” he mumbles.

-

After a long shower, Keith heads back to his room. His face is back to its normal color but still faintly shimmers under direct light, which Lance and Hunk both promised would fade within the next day. Keith can’t really bring himself to be that annoyed about it because his skin does actually feel pretty good, although he’ll never admit it. Even so, he’s immeasurably grateful for the full coverage of his Blade mask. The less to explain, the better.

There’s a piece of paper attached to his door, some kind of drawing. He pulls it down and tries to figure out what he’s looking at. It looks like a humanoid shape in red with one foot on the Black Lion and one foot on the Red Lion, like it’s waterskiing through a sea of stars. Which is impossible. Keith squints at it and realizes it’s probably supposed to be him. Huh.

Below the doodle is a note in Pidge’s familiar scrawl:

_Thanks for helping me break the ice today. I think everything’s finally back to normal, and it wouldn't have happened without you._ _You’re a really good friend._

She’s signed it with her usual self-portrait, the one she likes to embed in her code, except she’s colored her face in red.

Keith bites back his smile and folds the note neatly, stashing it in his pack to take with him.

 

 

 

_I believe that we're in this together.  
_

\- Mika

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally cut from WW because it didn't really fit anywhere, but I liked the concept and ended up coming back to it as a way of easing back into the mindset of this particular reality. I am still working on a sequel (much to everyone's surprise because it ended nearly a year ago!) but Lance's perspective has been a lot harder to slip into. Working on this snippet definitely helped. 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr at yellowmechanicalcat!


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